Why Call Tracking Is My Secret Sauce For Booking Marketing Clients & Keeping Them For Years
[Image via CallRail]
With District Maven's 15th birthday around the corner, I can't help but feeling nostalgic. Maybe it is a case of imposter syndrome, but I still have to pinch myself sometimes. How often does a business started in a college bedroom ever actually work out? Exactly my point.
Having this anniversary on the horizon has also left me feeling particularly generous. As such, to do my readers a solid and share one of the key ingredients to the secret sauce of success – not just for current District Maven clients, but prospective ones as well. You ready?
Truth is, it all comes down to data. On the surface, that definitely doesn't sound like a sexy topic. After digging deeper however, it quickly becomes evident that solid metrics can be steamy as hell. It just depends on what data you are tracking.
Sure, Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools provide some insights into your metrics, but looking at these alone is a huge mistake. While great in their own ways, they don't account for all the ways a company's target demographic interacts with the business online and engages in ROI-producing behavior.
To get a more complete, fuller picture, I always recommend tracking other data points as well. Any Average Joe can also track website form intake data, but the District Maven team always goes the extra mile. We track phone calls too.
Resist the urge to go all "Big Brother Conspiracy Theorist" and hear me out. Don't get me wrong – website views or social media profile visits are great and all, but they in no way mean that you actually profited off of it. While tracking the forms collected by the company website certainly provides some more accurate lead conversion insights, it still doesn't account for the whole picture. This is especially true for companies whose customers purchase decision making process is a short one, like hospitality and lifestyle businesses.
Enter call tracking. Despite being originally intended for use in pay-per-click advertising campaigns, these apps are hugely beneficial for other types of marketing efforts as well. These analytical platforms utilize a unique phone number (with a custom area code) to track the source of incoming calls to a business or brand.
The digits displayed are different for every separate IP address, which allows the program to record key data metrics about the user. Each platform has their own individual features and quirks, so it may take some research to find the one right for your company. For District Maven clients, I always use CallRail, which I find to be the most robust and cost-effective. This site collects tons of data too, including:
1. The caller's name, phone number and date/time of calling.
2. The landing page from which the caller dialed the business from.
3. Whether the call was answered or not, and if so, the duration of the call.
4. If the person was a new or a repeat caller.
5. Recording the call for quality assurance. (This feature can be turned off, but I always keep it on. You wouldn't believe how helpful these recordings can be to marketing clients from an operational perspective.)
Why Does This Data Even Matter?
Simply put young Padawan, because it is concrete evidence of actual human interaction. It is easy to be blinded by numbers from Google Analytics, but let's all try to remember that they should be taken with a grain of salt. This is easier said than done, especially for small businesses with even smaller marketing budgets. In fact, I'll go as far as saying that this is the number one reason why most marketing teams are axed within months of being hired. They just cannot definitively prove the return on investment that their efforts bring to the table.
It's not that most marketers are shitty at their job, they just aren't tracking all the data or correct metrics. There is no doubt that call tracking platforms have been a game changer in signing and retaining clients, especially in tough, cash-based hospitality industry. At the end of the day, I can go to my clients with the basic Google Analytics reports AND a list of legitimate humans who picked up the phone and called their business. And since the targeted demographic of bars, restaurants and nightclubs have the shortest purchase-making decision process, they are far likelier to call if truly interested.
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but it's tough to argue with voice recordings of potential customers calling your business. It is impossible to challenge that fact, *and* being able to attribute those leads to your online marketing efforts with total certainty. That my friends, is a SEO chef's kiss.
[Image via CallRail]
With District Maven's 15th birthday around the corner, I can't help but feeling nostalgic. Maybe it is a case of imposter syndrome, but I still have to pinch myself sometimes. How often does a business started in a college bedroom ever actually work out? Exactly my point.
Having this anniversary on the horizon has also left me feeling particularly generous. As such, to do my readers a solid and share one of the key ingredients to the secret sauce of success – not just for current District Maven clients, but prospective ones as well. You ready?
Truth is, it all comes down to data. On the surface, that definitely doesn't sound like a sexy topic. After digging deeper however, it quickly becomes evident that solid metrics can be steamy as hell. It just depends on what data you are tracking.
Sure, Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools provide some insights into your metrics, but looking at these alone is a huge mistake. While great in their own ways, they don't account for all the ways a company's target demographic interacts with the business online and engages in ROI-producing behavior.
To get a more complete, fuller picture, I always recommend tracking other data points as well. Any Average Joe can also track website form intake data, but the District Maven team always goes the extra mile. We track phone calls too.
Resist the urge to go all "Big Brother Conspiracy Theorist" and hear me out. Don't get me wrong – website views or social media profile visits are great and all, but they in no way mean that you actually profited off of it. While tracking the forms collected by the company website certainly provides some more accurate lead conversion insights, it still doesn't account for the whole picture. This is especially true for companies whose customers purchase decision making process is a short one, like hospitality and lifestyle businesses.
Enter call tracking. Despite being originally intended for use in pay-per-click advertising campaigns, these apps are hugely beneficial for other types of marketing efforts as well. These analytical platforms utilize a unique phone number (with a custom area code) to track the source of incoming calls to a business or brand.
The digits displayed are different for every separate IP address, which allows the program to record key data metrics about the user. Each platform has their own individual features and quirks, so it may take some research to find the one right for your company. For District Maven clients, I always use CallRail, which I find to be the most robust and cost-effective. This site collects tons of data too, including:
1. The caller's name, phone number and date/time of calling.
2. The landing page from which the caller dialed the business from.
3. Whether the call was answered or not, and if so, the duration of the call.
4. If the person was a new or a repeat caller.
5. Recording the call for quality assurance. (This feature can be turned off, but I always keep it on. You wouldn't believe how helpful these recordings can be to marketing clients from an operational perspective.)
Why Does This Data Even Matter?
Simply put young Padawan, because it is concrete evidence of actual human interaction. It is easy to be blinded by numbers from Google Analytics, but let's all try to remember that they should be taken with a grain of salt. This is easier said than done, especially for small businesses with even smaller marketing budgets. In fact, I'll go as far as saying that this is the number one reason why most marketing teams are axed within months of being hired. They just cannot definitively prove the return on investment that their efforts bring to the table.
It's not that most marketers are shitty at their job, they just aren't tracking all the data or correct metrics. There is no doubt that call tracking platforms have been a game changer in signing and retaining clients, especially in tough, cash-based hospitality industry. At the end of the day, I can go to my clients with the basic Google Analytics reports AND a list of legitimate humans who picked up the phone and called their business. And since the targeted demographic of bars, restaurants and nightclubs have the shortest purchase-making decision process, they are far likelier to call if truly interested.
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but it's tough to argue with voice recordings of potential customers calling your business. It is impossible to challenge that fact, *and* being able to attribute those leads to your online marketing efforts with total certainty. That my friends, is a SEO chef's kiss.
